Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.14.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Southern 441 Nissan (Revisited)

Episode Date: March 14, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder revisits Southern 441 Nissan for a second time in a month to see if he can purchase new Nissan Rogue at a very special price and obtain the buyer's order. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn cyber. space through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership.

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, this is the recovering car dealer, Earl, live. You listen to my recorded introduction, and we're ready for another show. Excuse me. Exciting times we're in. Nobody in the world isn't aware of the coronavirus, and we're not going to talk about that today. It might be a nice relief for a couple hours.

We're going to talk about how you can buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by car dealers. Also, we're going to be answering a lot of questions. It's going to be a busy morning, so stay tuned. I think you're going to get something out of the show. We have a caller holding already. Buddy, keep on holding. You're our first caller. If you just stay on there, we'd like to introduce the folks in the studio

and let everybody know, maybe new to the show, who we are. Probably, I believe, holding right now, we have Nancy Stewart. Nancy hasn't called in yet. She will call in shortly. Nancy is my co-host. Been with me for these 17 years. We've been doing this show. That's right.

It's a long time. We started out as a half-an-hour show, and we've evolved. into what we are today. Two hours, we're on from 8 to 10 this morning every Saturday. We have Rick Kearney, who I mentioned earlier, and Rick is one of the most qualified auto technicians. I never know what to call him. Some of you folks call him a mechanic.

Sometimes Rick calls himself a grease monkey. I think it's kind of a self-deprecating, but that's okay. He laughs. But whatever it is, he's a computer scientist, and that's what cars are today. on wheels. I know you've got some questions about the operation of a car. I've got questions about my car, and I've been on the business for 50 years. Cars are complex today, and when they break or make noises or, you know, bother you in some way, oftentimes you can't diagnose it

yourself. Rick, if you call in, Rick will diagnose that in the audience also in the studio, I should say, is Stu Stewart, my son. He also runs my dealership, Earl Stewart. Toyota, and I say that because I don't want you to think I'm hiding the fact I'm a car dealer. I am an active car dealer, but this show is not an infomercial. This show is

consumer advocacy to help you and help you find out how you can navigate that minefield of buying and maintaining your car without getting in trouble because car dealers, a lot of them, too many of them, are waiting for you and it can be a bad experience.

Stu is also going to talk to you about our mystery shopping report. And, oh, we do have Nancy on the line now. So I'm going to put Nancy on it because she's very special, not just being my co-host and my wife, my partner, but she's a female advocate. So good morning, Nancy. How about telling the folks out there what your specialty is with respect to our female audience? I'd love to. Good morning, everybody. and good morning to everyone in the studio.

Good morning, Nancy. One more week off. Good morning, and I will be back. And I'm here this morning to let all of you know that I hope we're a great distraction for you this morning with everything that's going on. So it's going to be a great show, a great mystery shopping report. And ladies, I have something special for you as a consumer of it. I kind of stay close to the ladies.

and what's going on out there and hear from a lot of you throughout the week. So I have a few texts to share with Earl Stewart on cars and we'll get to those later. But ladies, this morning, we have $50 for the first two new lady callers. Yes, you're pretty special. And I thank you for helping me build this platform for women. The show certainly has gone in a different direction

and we certainly have accumulated quite a few. lady callers. So there you go. And if you would just like to share an opinion, ask us a question, you can do so by texting us at 772-497-6530. So as I said earlier, it's going to be an exciting show. We've got a great mystery shopping report. We'll get to later on in the show from Southern 4401 Nissan. And Earl, back to you. Okay, Nancy, thank you very much. Let's talk a little bit about, oh, we've got a caller. Let's get to Buddy. That's what we ought to do. Are you still holding, Buddy?

Buddy are you on the line. I am. Good morning. How are you? Great. How are you doing? Thanks for calling. Good. I've been listening to you for 17 years. Wow. That's a long time. I'm a geyser. I'm an old geyser. And one thing I have found over time that the car, car buying process gets nastier and nastier.

Why is it so painful? Yeah. You know, we're together on that, buddy. I would think that it would improve. I think, realistically, it has gotten a little bit better, but not much. It's still, they still have, you'll see from our mystery shopping report later, it's a bad one. And you wonder how these dealerships exist today. I have a couple of specific questions.

I'm in negotiation now. How much does a car dealer make on a $40,000 car? That's a great question, and it's a complicated question. And if you've been listening to me and you know me, as you do, I'm not tap dancing here. I'm not going to try to give you a smoke and mirror answer. $2,000. The average, there's something called the gross profit,

and that is what we mark up the car from our cost and sell it for car dealers, new car dealers. And the average markup, and if you want to include the finance insurance profit in there, then you're probably talking around somewhere $1,000. With finance insurance, probably around $2,000. Yeah, $2,000. We separate the finance and insurance. it is only added, it's not really added to the price of the car, but it becomes a cost to you.

If you pay cash or you use your own financing, then the average markup is about half of that, which is about $1,000. And then if you look at net profit, because now you get your overhead expenses, you've got to pay the salesman, a commission, you've got to pay your light bill, you've got to pay for your advertising. All these whole expenses that are charged to the new car department bring the actual profit. on a new car down to about $400, but that's in a successful dealership. Many dealerships, I'm going to say about half or more, don't make any money in the new car department. The new car department has become like cell phones. When they first started out, they were a profit on the cell phone, and later on, the cell phones are practically being given away.

I'm not saying cars are being given away. But the bottom line is, buddy, is that the profit on a new car is very, very low. The bad part about that is it could be for buyer A very high and buyer B extremely low. We're talking averages here. An uneducated consumer can come in there and pay a car dealer $5,000 or $10,000 in profit. A very sophisticated buyer can come in and actually buy the car at cost or actually below. cost. And I know that's a lot more than you wanted to hear, but I had to give you a complete honest answer.

So if you're negotiating a good deal for yourself, what percentage off the MSRP would it be? Would it be? 10% off the MSRP, 15%, what would it be? Buddy, you can't use the MSRP discount criteria unless you are looking at the exact same vehicle and shopping and comparing. If you want to buy a Ford Tourist and you go to Ford Dealer A and he gives you a 10% discount, you've got to go to Ford dealer B and look at the exact same car and see what discount he'll give you. And be sure that you're looking at the MSRP and not the addendum label or the dealer list price and get at least three or four of those. The biggest discount you get on that Ford Tourist will be your best buy. The reason I say that

is discounts off of cars vary. A big truck can have a 25% or 30% discount. A small car, you know, a mini-car type of thing, could only have a 10% discount, a full discount over MSRP. What's the difference between an MSRP and a market value selling price? Market value is a smoke and mirror term invented by car dealers to make you discount the MSRP. The MSRP manufacturers suggest a retail price,

also known as the Monroney label, is the only accurate list retail price. It's not a cost, it's a retail price. And it was put into effect in 1958 so that the consumer, the car buyer, new car buyer, would have apples and apples criteria. You take the same year-make model car with the same MSRP,

and you can buy it from the dealer that gives you the biggest discount off of that MSRP. If you get a quote and they're talking about market value selling price, should you then say, that doesn't mean anything to me? I need the MSRP. Exactly. It's federal law that you know the MSRP. If a car dealer takes the MSRP Monroney label off a new car, he's subject to fine, large fine, thousands of dollars.

they try to obfuscate, they try to hide it, they'll put a phony and roney, I call them, a fake addendum label next to it. They'll call market adjustment, as you say, and they'll also add overpriced accessories. And if you stay tuned to our mystery shopping report later in the show today, we shopped Southern 441 Nissan,

and they added a $1,700 addendum label to the MSRP to smoke and me or confused the buyer. In giving a car buyer a quote, there are certain items that they have on the sales sheet that I don't understand. What are taxable fees, and in parentheses, estimated?

What is that? That's a great fine for you, buddy, because it's a newest term I've seen for the dealer fee. Years ago, they actually called the hidden addition to the cost a dealer fee. And when the dealer fee became a common term, they started going away from that

and creating new terms. And they created new terms, which they're all additional profit, hidden profit to the dealer. They call them dock fees, electronic filing fees, administration fees. But the very latest is what you just said, taxable

fees. If a fee is taxed, it's not a government fee. If a fee is taxed, It is profit to the dealer, and he's just decided he wants to call it a fee and hide it and surprise you when you sign on the dotted line. What is a non-tax fee? Non-tax fee are legitimate. A non-tax fee is like sales tax or your license and registration that have paid to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Okay.

They seem to always want, on top of everything else, they always want a deal. A dealer fee. Yes. A dealer fee. And according to Earl Stewart law, you never pay a dealer fee. Exactly. Yeah. The whole purpose of the dealer fee is to hide it.

Because when you advertise a car, you negotiate, you talk to a customer. They say, how much is this car, and you tell them, or you put it online. The whole process, you never see the hidden fees. And then when you're ready to sign in, oftentimes you never know about that, because it's very with taxable fees, electronic filing fees, tag agency fees, and so it goes through the computer and you sign and when the smoke clears and maybe the smoke never clears, but when you get home a few days later, you look at the paperwork and you find $1,000 or $2,000 and things you can't identify and that's exactly the reason for the dealer fee. Boy, that's something else. That is. There's something else.

I went to a dealer, and I wasn't happy with the quote, and he put it in writing, and then he called me, and he lowered the price by $2,000. This is over the phone, but he won't put that new quote in writing. What do you make of that? Well, it's because they aren't going to honor the quote, and it can be, you know, as he says, she said,

if they try to bump you a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars, you'll very rarely see a car dealer put anything in writing until you're ready to sign and drive the car home. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of car dealerships. The salesmen are instructed if you give the customer a price in writing, like on a buyer's order and give it to them and let them take it with them, the salesman will be fired. The whole way dealers exist and make it.

profits is by raising the price beyond what their competition would charge you. If they give you a written price and you take that and you put it in your pocket and go to their competitor, the competitor will beat the price, nine times out of ten. So once they give you a firm price and price in writing is a firm price, they feel like you're going to lose the business and they probably will. A technique that some people use in negotiating for a car, they ask for the factory invoice for the car, the price that the dealer paid. And sometimes they're forthcoming, they'll give you that. But I'm amazed at how little the dealer makes.

According to that, there must be other incentives that they receive from the manufacturer on. top of that, right? Yeah, buddy, my son, Stu, would like to answer that question for you. Hey, buddy. It wouldn't hurt to take a look at the invoice, but you got to be an expert on knowing how to read it. There's a lot of hidden things in there. So I can address, like, toilet new car invoices. If you know where to look, it'll show you some of these kickbacks that come back to the dealer that is additional profit. If you just look at the line, it'll tell you that the cost of the car is $25,000. Then there's a paragraph. a little bit lower that shows the amounts of various, they call them holdbacks, but they're

really kickbacks, but you're absolutely right. There are other monies that are coming back to the dealer that do not appear on that invoice. There's advertising credit, there's gasoline credit, there's incentives, it's stair step incentives, there's all sorts of money. So that's a document that could be useful, but it's very incomplete. Thousands of dollars. Yeah. In making the deal, once you agree on things, then they really open their bag of tricks and they try to sell you add-ons. Yes, yeah. Dealer-installed accessories. What are really necessary add-ons after you've made the deal? None.

Sales tax. I have the word virtually. The whole purpose of the dealer-installed accessories is to have something with a high perceived retail value with a very, very low cost. nitrogen and tires is an example dealers will charge anywhere from 200 to 800 or whatever they can get away with to put nitrogen in new tires which is totally worthless

and which costs them pennies there are a lot of things window tent there's a what do you think of window stripes yeah exactly should window tint be be gotten the window

tint I would I would have any accessory that the factory could not provide I would wait and add it after I bought the car. If you want to tent the windows on your car, you can find window tenors. You're going to get a competitive bid, someone with a high Google rating that does good work, and let them do it. Your price will be probably half what the dealer would charge you. Same thing with pinstripes.

Any accessory that you want on a car. And a better quality product, too, if you do it. Exactly. You better get a higher quality and you get a lower price. The dealers, the accessories, the dealer installed accessories, are a huge profit. center, just like the finance department is a huge profit center. You come into buy a car, and next thing you know, they're selling you window tent and nitrogen and tires and road hazard insurance. Paint ceiling. Paint ceiling. Fabric ceiling. The list is in us. Motherguards.

What do you think the manufacturers are going to do in today's climate? Are they going to have tremendous extras like zero percent financing? They already do? Yeah, they're doing 0%. That's almost commonplace now. Leasing, they're pushing leasing because they make more money when they lease the car simply because the lessee re-leases or not buys another car when they buy a car, when they lease a car, far more off. And if they sell the car, they don't have the return business.

Car dealers also make a lot more money on leases. But, yeah, the manufacturers are scrambling just like the dealers are. It's a very competitive business, and people are worried about the future, successful future of the car business. Manufacturers and dealers are worried about that. What suggestions do you have for negotiating a good deal for yourself? Competition. All dealers have a common disease. They're insanely competitive, and there's usually two or three or four dealers of the same make in the same marketplace within, you know, 25 or 30 miles.

else. And if you take, once you decide the car you want to buy, you want to buy a Honda Civic, there's four Honda dealers in the market, this local market, Palm Beach County, with an easy driving distance. I would go to consumer reports. I would, I would decide exactly which conda, a civic I wanted with the accessories and the MSRP, and then I would go to each Honda dealer, either online or by phone. And if you really want to, if you're a tough guy, you can go in person, I prefer online, and get their out-the-door price from four different Honda dealers. And let them know that you're shopping and comparing. If you do that, you'll get the very best price on that Honda Civic, probably the lowest price

they sold that vehicle for all month. There are some car dealers that will offer you a coupon, a $250 coupon for test driving, a car. Is that legitimate? No, it's a way to get you in the door. they just marked the car up by 250 and then give you a coupon to mark it down again by 250. Coupons, the freebies,

you know, come in and get a watch or whatever they're giving away. They have a drawing and you always win something. And it's kind of like dealer-installed accessories. It sounds good, but when they put it in your hand and you see what you won, it might be worth five bucks, I mean, maybe ten bucks

to get you in the door. The recovering car dealer is terrific. Thank you very. Very much. I appreciate it. I enjoyed the call. I enjoyed hearing from an educated consumer like you, buddy. Please call again. Thank you. Bye. Okay. 877-960-9960. That's 877-960. And Texas is 772-497-6-5-30. That text number is 772-497-6530. And we've got another caller.

We've got Tina from Benita Springs. Hi, Tina. from Bonita. Hey, how are you all doing this morning? We're doing fine. I'm glad you're called because we got Nancy out of action still and you're the second most strong female advocate

I know. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. That last phone call as the kids say nowadays was epic. Anybody that's wanting to buy a car needs to when their recording comes out, they need to listen to this episode. They have to.

It's a must listen. That was fabulous. He's a good guy, buddy knows and stuff. Yeah, it was really good. I thought I'd bring to your attention today, like, okay, this is the season, of course, every season, really. It's the season for car dealers to hawk every kind of

vehicle that they have for great advertised prices. And there's one thing, one trend I noticed with one particular dealer here on the West Coast of Florida that makes my blood kind of run cold. Bring in your IRS tax refund. We can get you into a new car. And I'm thinking

this is, for one thing, it's taking advantage, it's taking unfair advantage of economically disadvantaged people. I can't think of another turn for that. But it's taking advantage of people that really don't have the money to be burning. Exactly. And once that tax

refund is gone, it is bond. You are not getting one penny of that back. And you could be paying all kinds of fees. You could be paying a high dealer fee. And by the time you paid a dealer fee, your tax refund is eaten. up completely. So I hate hearing bringing your tax

free print. Please don't bring in your tax free fund. Bring in a friend and look at the fine print and read all the numbers and make a decision there but once that money's history there's no getting it back. Great advice, Tanna. While you were talking I held up a full page. I had

by Roger Dean Chevrolet. Sounds like I'm picking on Roger Dean because but he's one of the few dealers that advertise in the newspaper anymore, but it's exactly what you're talking about, doubled your cash refund, your tax refund, double your tax refund if you come into Roger Dean. And it's smoking mirrors. It's nonsense. It's just a way to exploit all those people that are anxiously waiting for the tax refund. I think they even have a form. Stu, is this right? They have a

form when you come in. They'll actually, you can assign your tax refund in writing before you get it. I think so. I've heard of that. Yeah. I think they're doing that. It's about as low as you can go. As you said, Tina, taking advantage of those people that can least afford it. Yeah, is it okay if I mention the dealership? Oh, please, yeah. We love to do that. Uh, fusillo, Kia. Kea.

Kea, what was it? Fucillo. It's going to be a huge job. Yeah. He is. He's the largest Kia dealer in the United States. He says he is. He says he is.

Then there's like, there's another one like Planet Kia. There's another one. They're like in a death battle, like who's claiming in the crown of the top key of the dealer in the United States. But he does outsell the Toyota dealer in that market. And he sells like four or five hundred kias. He sells a ton of them. I just think it's funny that there's

two kias that are making competing claims for the title. Oh, okay. Well, thank you, Tina. That's, you've got one of the biggest flim-flam guys in the market in your market. Yeah, it's like, come see me for a car

that may catch fire at some point. I'd love to get a TV commercial and play it on the air for a man he's a he's a he's a classic he's one of the you remember remember fast eddy from New York years ago crazy Eddie or crazy yeah yeah he's in there was a guy in California too but this guy what's the same again Fuchillo Fucillo he is he's a legend he's a classic and he's from Long Island I think originally he's opened up some stores down in Florida You know, if your television ad is deceptive enough, but it's entertaining, and it is actually, people watch it because they want to be entertained. And then if enough people do that, there's going to be those that will actually succumb and go in by a car.

Yeah, he was advertising, like, entire vacation packages when you buy a new Kia. Exactly. Well, Tina, thank you very much for the call. Yeah, big screen TV, too. Can you forget to big screen TV. Don't people know that when you look at the numbers and see the the insulated cost that you're actually paying for the big screen. Maybe you just go to Walmart and get one for half price.

Yeah, you didn't get a free TV. You bought a car and a TV. Yes. That's what you did. Exactly. No such thing as a free lunch. Well, Dana, thanks again for being there for us and for the ladies in the audience and for Nancy. And please call again next week.

Thank you. Thanks, Tina. Anything love to you, Nancy. Hopefully, we don't feel better soon, hon. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, we've got another call. Let me give that number out again.

877-960-99-60. We love you to call. We love to hear your voice. 877-960-960. And for those of you that don't want to call for whatever reason, you can text us at 772-497-65-30. Or even better. If you're really feeling shy.

Exactly. Your anonymous feedback. dot com. I always forget that. www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Very good. And I think we have another caller. We have Bob in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Bob. Good morning.

I am a fan of Earl Stewart Toyota. Thank you. I am on my third Camry. Oh. And I have a couple of points to think about that

Camry. I bought that Camry the last April 2018 used from here a lot. And there are two things I'd like to discuss about it. The first thing I ran into after driving the car was a rough shifting

transmission. I went to my assistant service manager at your company Mr. Goldberg. And he said, well, they have had software updates on that.

In fact, we installed one in there before you bought the car and there'll be more coming down the road. So I said, okay, I'll wait for that and went along all right. Then in February of this year for the second time that I've owned Camry, I was backing out

of a parking space at a restaurant and intending to go into drive. But before I could do that, the car kept going back. So I hit the brakes and nothing happened. Get the brakes and nothing happened. This happened four or five times. Eventually, I hit a car.

And I moderate damage to my camera, which was expertly repaired by your body shop. It looks terrific. So what I did was I wrote a letter to Toyota. Well, actually, I called Toyota and explained the problem to them. And in two days, I had a call from very professional. lady who said that she was assigning a technician from a subcontractor in Michigan who would be coming would be talking to me before the end of the week

any day he called me identified himself in the kid he wants to look at my car he said well my car right now is it disposed that old Stuart Toyota they're doing bodywork on it why don't you call a certain gentleman at Earl Stewart, and he will let you know when the car will be available. He said, fine, he did that. So they've been, they worked through this period and very good communication with me, both your company and the inspector about when they would be in to do it. So we could go Friday.

He came to your store, and he spent about five hours on my car. When he got through, you should report to me, which I got my email, which I cannot understand. But essentially what I kind of gathered from it was that there's nothing wrong with your car. So I called him on the telephone, a very fine gentleman. He indicated that I could, and I asked him about what was the bottom line. The bottom line was I didn't find anything wrong with your car. The brakes worked fine.

Well, he spent five hours on that car, and when he got all through, the car runs better now than I never ran from the day I bought it he's booed out the transmission I think one of your prior broadcasts Rick mentioned a certain word that you fellows use it sounds like a shock to the transmission and it snapped it back into what it should be doing maybe I misunderstood all of that but in any case he did that

and I'm really totally satisfied with a car Well, thank you, Bob. I appreciate that. I just wanted to indicate that one to you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's really a very good car. I looked at when I saw it, and the other thing that I learned from you a few weeks ago was that if you bought a white Camry, or maybe any white Toyota in the last year,

18 and on up, be aware of the fact that you may have paint coming off, in which they will, under warranty, fix it for you. Yes, that's not. I'm not worried about that. I'm sure they will. I'm sure you'll honor it. The other thing that did in Presbyor was the fact that Toya was very earnest in what they did. They didn't delay anything.

They didn't stall. They went right on it, and they got to hear it by. As soon as that car was ready to go, before it had even been cleaned by your cleaning people, because it was very dirty inside naturally because of all the work they had to do on it, including welding and that sort of thing. He got in there, and he did his work,

and I'm really thankful for that. Well, Bob, thanks. I just want to let you know that. I appreciate it. Listeners who may have had that problem because I ran out of that problem on Street 4, but that 2008, and again, they indicated

it was nothing wrong with the car. and I'm not going to say they're whitewashing. I'm sure they're not. Well, the outcome is good. I'm still skeptical. I'm like you. No, I feel like you do. I'm going to investigate this.

Rick will investigate it with me because I'm happy your car is running well. I can see the concern. I'd have the same concern. And we will investigate this. And hopefully we'll have an answer for you next week. We'll talk to the service manager, the technicians. Rick wasn't involved in this, but whoever was involved with the factory person, we'll get you an answer. And if you call back in next week, we'll have it for you.

Well, that's wonderful. I do appreciate so much. Oh, thank you, Bob. I certainly didn't expect that when I caught you. Oh, please call. I will call you again. I'll just add this quick note. I did some research to on my own, and I went to, what is it, an NHTSA or whatever it is,

it's a government agency that controls car safety. And there have been instances in the past where this problem has been brought to the surface. So I'm not alone in this. There are other people that. It's not only, you know, either. There are other manufacturers that have had this problem where the, whatever is, that particular product that's in the car that controls the brakes. Exactly. Can stop for a bit, you know, just.

freeze up or whatever, like computers do, I guess. And I know it fell in the Navy, and they used to have that on their ships, too. Sure. These devices used to freeze on them. And that's it. So, anyway, I'll give you a buzz next Saturday. Okay. We'll have an answer

for you, Bob. And thanks very much. Have a great day. I think we have another caller here. Let me give that number out. 877-960-99-60. That's a real telephone. 877-960 for audio. And we have the text.

772-4976530. That text number again is 772 497-6530 and the caller. And we've got Warren from Pompano Beach. Hey, Warren. Hey, how you doing, Earl? Doing great. How are you doing?

I got a question for you. Yeah. I'm just thinking about a car and I'm months away, maybe even January. But tell me the difference between an Avalon and Alexis. Why should anybody pay more for Alexis just because it has a little, you know, whatever on it? And when an Avalon, because I know somebody's got one, and I don't see the difference on it, and you're paying a lot more money.

Like, you obviously sell Avalon's not Alexis. So why should somebody get Alexis when I could go into your place and get an Avalon? I'm just curious what the difference would be. Stu can give you an answer on that. He knows more about the product than I do. Well, we were, hey, Warren. We were just talking about Avalon's the other day. And like we said, we don't want to be a commercial for Toyota or for the dealership,

but consumer reports just came out and, like, rated the top luxury sedan. I'm out there right now. And the answer is there isn't a whole lot of difference. All I would say is maybe the 2020 Avalon is equivalent to maybe the 2017 or 2018 Lexus. They tend to put some of the newer features. They try them out on Lexus first. I guess, I mean, I think there's more power, like in the LS, than the GS, which is comparable to the Avalon. So you might get some more power.

But as far as, like, you know, the quality and the fit and finish and just the feel of it, they're essentially the same car. But, Warren, your feeling is correct. It's a prestige thing. People buy Lexus because it's a luxury car. and when they go out and have the valet parker park their car or pick their car up they like to say I have the black Lexus and Sarah's better than I have a black Toyota

and I've actually had friends of mine who called me and said I Earl I want you to know that I bought cars from me for the past 20 years my wife says she will not have a Toyota in our driveway and she wants a Lexus and so we're going to have to buy a Lexus and apologize but that's marketing

And that's the reason you have the Infinity and the Nissan and have the Accura and you have the Honda and you have the, what is it, Cadillac and the Chevrolet. So you have a luxury model for most of the manufacturers. People do it for prestige and status. Well, the question about the Avalon is theoretically, if I went into your place or any place and said, look, I want the least possible cost of an Avalon, okay. and the difference between the same nat and going into a Lexus place and saying the same thing. I mean, how much difference, how much of a difference of money would I be saving, let's say, on leasing the cheapest Avalon you had and the cheapest Lexus you had.

I'm going to shoot a number out, two or three thousand dollars, and it would be even higher if you went to a more expensive Avalon. Or on the lease payment, though you're probably looking at a, you know, $150,000 difference. Yeah, it's a crazy difference. Before I forget to mention them, to maintain and have your car service, if you go to a Lexus dealer, they will charge you an arm and a leg. Oil change will cost you twice as much at a Lexus dealer as a little Toyota dealer. It'll cost you twice as much at a Cadillac dealer than a Chevrolet dealer. But you could take any general motor product to a Chevrolet dealer, including Cadillac's.

Take your infinity to a Nissan dealer and take your Accura to a Honda dealer, and you'll save a ton of money in maintenance and repairs. Yeah My cousin's got an Avalon And, you know He's a lawyer And one of his clients With a Toyota deal up here in New Jersey And he had a left letter

You know I forgot what year it was But it was January And they still had the year before And But it was a great deal at the time You know But somebody said

You know, one of his colleagues And well, you know It's not Alexis It's an Avalon And like He could care less But you know what I'm saying And they just have it in their head that you have a Lexus, it's like something better even though it's the same car.

Sure. If you want the status and the prestige, then you buy the luxury version. If you want practicality and the economy and you want to get a value, you should buy the lower price spread. Rick has some point. Okay. The next question is I'm just curious about one thing. You've talked about this like a hundred times, but I still don't understand. And why did the dealer make more money on a lease than they do on a car?

I'm selling the car. Like, why is it, I mean, I don't, what is the mechanics for that? And if I go and lease the Lexus from you, or I go in, I'm in the Avalise, I go in and lease, go in and lease, buy the lease. Like, why would you make more money selling it than you would, leasing it than selling it? Yeah, I'll ask too to explain that. He's in the trenches he knows exactly. Yeah, but to answer your first question, I just looked this up, by the way. The comparable 2020 Lexus to the Avalon lease payment, they're special they're running locally is $5.49 a month with $3,000 out of pocket.

The Toyota regional special for the Avalon is like $420, so it's about $120 a month less for the same terms, pretty much. The reason why dealers make more, there's a couple of reasons why. One, Earl already mentioned, is that in the long run, people come back in and turn the car in every three years. and they get a chance to, as opposed, what is the normal ownership, like eight years now or longer? Probably 48 months, 50 months. Yeah, so, but the main reason is because the way leasing is presented to customers, dealers tend to focus just on the payment. The selling price isn't really a factor that ever comes up in a conversation.

It is disclosed to you in the finance department, and that the cap cost, as they call it, is actually the selling price. The way you can avoid the dealer making more money than necessary is to treat it, like a purchase and you negotiate using competitive bids you negotiate the actual purchase price and then once you have established that then you say all right tell me what it is

to lease it and you tell them how much money out of pocket you want to come and I wouldn't recommend going more than a couple of thousand. Warren another reason that is more profitable to the dealers is there's a lot more opportunity for the smoke and mirrors you've charged a lot more hidden fees when you lease a car

first of all the lease payment advertise you can never lease it with a zero out of pocket leases were invented for people that didn't want to come out of pocket they don't want to make a monthly payment and then the dealers took the lease which was a good thing if you could just make a monthly payment and they bury down payments and they bar bury other fees in the fine print so when you lease a car the first thing happens instead of just a dealer fee or a hidden fee that the dealer normally charges on a sale of a car you have an acquisition fee and the dealer fee. So you pay an acquisition fee for close to $1,000,

and you also pay a dealer fee. So there's two hidden fees. And when you dispose of the lease, you're going to have to pay a disposition fee unless you lease another car or buy another car from that same manufacturer. So they blackmail you to stay with them and buy another car, else you'll pay disposition fee.

And then on top of that, you're going to have to pay any kind of a ding, dent, stain, anything above normal wear and tear on that vehicle. If your tires are worn too much, if you have a scratch, if you have a stain on the upholstery, it is not uncommon to get a bill from the leasing company for $1,000 or $2,000. So there's a lot of things that you don't know about that are hidden below the radar. Another one is the over-milege fee. When you lease the car, most people don't even know what the allow. mileage is. That was in the fine print. It could be 10,000 miles. It could be 15,000 miles. It could be 7,500 miles. And they can charge it 25 cents a mile when you go over that, and you don't realize it until you turn the car in. You can get a bill from them on over mileage in the thousands of

dollars. So leasing is only for the very astute, very educated, very careful buyer, I should say, less or well I think I mentioned to you this last year it did happen to me and you know you said I was pretty sharp on it the only reason why it was I had the four tourists that I had now and I hadn't planned

on driving much back between New Jersey and Florida did a couple times and I ran over like 10,000 miles so when I was talking to them with the car and everything and they you know they looked at there was some damage or some chips and pay so I just don't forget it I'll buy the car I mean why should I do that

And, but I just want to say, buying the car was as simple as to be because I don't remember how I got to touch whoever owned at the bank or whatever, the finance company, I owned it. All I did was send you a bunch of papers. I filled it out. I sent it back to them. And they sent me, I didn't remember the interest, and they sent me a payment book. And it was like the simplest, it was easier than purchase in a Hershey bar. I was just, you know, go in, you know, so they mailed the paperwork, and went back to them, came back to me. signed it

and the next day I know they gave me the book and I had the car I just figured I'm not paying all those all that stuff and you know the dealer kept calling me and said well do this and I said forget it's done already

I bought the car and two years from now you know maybe I'll you know sell it and at least another one or buy another which I still have the car anyway Warren you're right you're an educated consumer

and you got to figure it out you're 100% right okay Thank you. Thank you so much on the, you know, one last question. When you go to lease a car and you say, like, go one dealer, two dealers, three dealers. How do you know you're going apples to apples? In other words, if you say, well, I want an Avalon, they come to your place. I mean, I mean, how much more gizmos would there be on each car to say, well, you know, my car,

you're paying $20 more a month because there's another button over here, and you need that button. I mean, like, how do you know? MSRP. Match the MSRPs. Exactly. Identical MSRP, and don't vary from that $1. Pick the year-make-model car you want and then shop the MSRP with a lease with three different dealers. But also hold constant that any down payment, any out-of-pocket expense, be sure you hold that constant.

And the number months, 36-month lease, you can't compare to a 48-month lease. And also your mileage allowance, exactly. If that affects the residual amount, which will affect the payment. Well, the residual, as long as you're doing MSRP and all the other things are being held constant, the lowest payment will get you the best deal. Thank you very much, Warren. Thank you very much. Appreciate your call.

I enjoy your show. Thank you. Bye-bye. 877-960-9960 is a call-in number, audio. 8779-960, text, 772-49-6960. text 772 4976530

that's 772 4976530 and we keep getting more college day and we have in a long time who's next Richard from St. Paul, Minnesota Wow, Minnesota

Hey Richard Hey, how are you? We're doing great What's up? Great. See, I'm looking to buy a popular vehicle that's not selling below the MS.

or actually above MSRP, is there any recommendation, should I just wait until the thing dies out? It's a Hyundai palisade that's real popular now. Any recommendations? Do I just wait until the end of the year or what? Well, you might have a problem with Hyundai because they closed the plant in Korea, and I'm not sure what the available to be not to take advantage or be crass about the current situation, but car sales might be slowing down this month and next month because I would always wait. I can't even think of any vehicle that I can remember that was a hot selling car that was being sold over MSRP where that situation stayed very long.

Usually it cools off and, you know, unless you absolutely had to get a car, you know, your car was totaled and you had no choice. I can't think of a reason to buy a car over MSRP. Richard, here's an example, is the Toyota Supra that came out a few months ago, and the prices that dealers were charging for the Supra were tens of thousands of dollars. Double MSRP. MSRP. Double the MS. And within three months, now they're being discounted sharply, and dealers have an inventory of supers. We actually have a factory incentive on them now.

Yeah, factory incentive. So that's one of the most extreme examples when the first guy that bought the Supra and walked in and paid $20,000 over his ticker, and now they can buy one for $500 over dealer cost. There's an example of how waiting on a high-demand, low-supply car will pay you off in the long run. Okay, great. I'll just hang in, or I'm surviving with what I've got, and I'll just watch the, you know, I'll just periodically check and see if they have any incentives and act on it when it happens.

Well, thanks, Richard, call the gun. We love out-of-state callers in Minnesota. I don't think we've had too many. Minnesota College. So please call again. Okay, we've got a you we have a YouTuber here. We've got Banhammer 1488 is asking can anyone make sense of this? A car listed is new, but a loner at the dealership. And Rainbow actually answered gave a partial good answer here. If the title hasn't changed hands, then they probably consider it new. Once the title goes in a new name, it is used. Could you give

a better explanation on that, Earl? I can't. That's a perfect explanation. It's unfortunate that there isn't a better legal terminology for new and used. There should be because you can have a new car with 100,000 miles on it. It has never been titled. And to me, that's just nonsense.

So legally, there should be some transparency. In Florida, and I can't speak for Minnesota or any other state, in Florida, a dealer is supposed to tell you when you take delivery of the car and have you sign a form

acknowledging that this was a demonstrator or a loaner car or something else. But the title will show a new car. Yeah, there's rules they've got to follow to make sure that your warranty is not impacted. And manufacturers, you actually report that vehicle to the manufacturer as a demo. And then on the buyer's order, in Florida at least,

you'll see up the top of every buyer's order there's three check boxes. One says new, one says use, the other says demo. If it's not, if they market new and it has miles on it and it's not being handled by the rules, you know, that's not good. They've got to follow the rules. Okay. You know, I think the phones are quiet temporarily. We better jump on the text. All right. Well, I'll start with your anonymous feedback. It says the state of Colorado. We got a caller? Okay. Let's take the caller. Callers take priority because you don't want to wait

too long. Sometimes we tie up the switchboard. The phones are burning today David in North Palm Beach Hey David Hi there I have a question for Rick please Okay I have a 2007

Salara The car was parked for a week I got it in it a week later And the car It does not go into gear It did not leak fluid The fluid is pink It seems like it's an electrical problem

Can I have any answers there The shifter moves But the car will not Shift them Correct The car starts up. Shifter moves. You can start it in any gear. So then you can start it in drive or reverse. Could this be the neutral safety switch? No, I'm going to say most likely it's your shift cable or something in the shifter has broken because the neutral safety switch is actually down on the transmission itself. So if it can start in any gear, that means the shifter portion on the transmission's not moving even though the shifter inside the car is.

Okay, makes a lot of sense. I think he answered my question. Appreciate it very much. Thanks for call, David, and please call again. Thank you. Okay, we're going to get to the text now, I think. Yeah, back to this anonymous feedback. It says, the state of Colorado pulls ahead in the 21st century

and will allow electric vehicle manufacturers without dealer franchises to sell directly to consumers. This is in Colorado. New law, it says. The caveat of the new law for 20th century carmakers is that the manufacturer of electric vehicles must be a sole EV manufacturer without any gasoline or diesel cars in its past.

The EV maker Rivian will be able to take full advantage and sell to consumers without the outdated dealer model. Thank you, and it's sign, Stu's Long Loss Sun. Wow. It's you, Jeremy, where have you been? Let me say this. This is huge.

Yes. And I hope there are a bunch of car dealers listening out there. It's a crack in the dike is what it is. Yeah, this is a crack in the dike for sure, and I want to verify this. I accept it. It makes sense. It's a good thing, and it's kind of a double whammy.

It's going to force the manufacturers to rush into being all-electric sooner, and it's also going to allow the Tesla model to take place in all the states. In fact, they'll even allow Tesla to open brick-and-mortar dealerships. I'm not sure how many they're going to want to open. But, yeah, whatever it would be. But the reason that this is breaking news and so exciting and such good news for the consumer is that the car dealers today are grandfathered in with archaic franchise laws in all 50 states protecting them. They're bulletproof. A car dealer can get away with almost anything, and they do.

And that's the reason car dealers do such a deceptive thing when they sell you a car. or maintain a repair your car. And that's why Earl Stewartman cars exist. In fact, it's kind of sad because if this were the case all over, this show wouldn't exist. We wouldn't have to help you. Because when you bought a car, it would be like a Tesla experience. And which is, I personally have experienced that I never went through

and actually bought it, but I've actually considered about buying a Tesla. And the whole experience is absolutely delightful compared to what you'll see in Mystery Shopping Reports on this show. A little more like buying. buying an iPhone than buying a Ford or something. Good example. All right, moving along, more anonymous feedback. Will you be closing your dealership to help our community stop the spread of the coronavirus?

Actually, we are not closing our dealership, but we have taken some measures to ensure the safety of our employees and our customers. What we're doing is we are paying all of our employees if they feel they may have. have a cough or a temperature or anything that suggests they might have the coronavirus. They get full pay. So no matter whatever their average pay was last month or whatever average we calculate, they get paid, they lose nothing by going home. No disincentive to stay at the dealership. Erring on the side of safety.

Because that's what's going on. I mean, sorry to interrupt. I'm saying that's the scariest thing is that when people facing a financial hardship, they go to work anyway or they put themselves in the situation. Yeah, they feel like they have to. They're afraid, which is worse, not being able to have a paycheck so I can take care of my family and my groceries or risk spreading the virus.

Also, we've taken kind of a extreme measure. We are also sending our customers home who are sneezing and coughing. We will not service or sell a car to someone that is there with a possible, virus, coronavirus or otherwise. I know this is extreme and I apologize to my customers for this, but I think when our customers think about it, they would rather protect the safety of our other employees and of our other customers. So we're just asking anyone with a cold or a flu of symptoms, please don't come into our dealership until they pass or until we have

a test for the coronavirus, and that's imminent. should happen very quickly. And then lastly, at our dealership, what we're doing is we're having, we have a full-time person going from, you know, door handle to door handle to steering wheel to keyboard to smartphone. We're wiping everything down. Keyboard, yeah. Disinfectants, we're wiping everything. They make a circle.

They wipe it down. They come back and they wipe it down again. The cleanest place in town. Cleanest place in town. And we think as long as that it works until our employees leave, If we have everybody leaving because of flu symptoms, then we will close. But that hasn't happened so far. We've only had two or three leave, I believe.

Yeah, yeah. Just out of precaution. Okay. The process is working. 877-960-9960 is a call-in number. 877-960. And the text number is 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530.

And we still have obvious feedback. I have a bunch. Yeah. Good morning, Earl. I feel that your show is lacking a minor detail, the details of a car purchase progression. You mentioned reading consumer reports, obtaining three or four out-the-door quotes, and researching independent financing. That's at the start of the process. Then you mentioned the box and declining options, services, and arbitration. Is there something to watch out for in between? Is there something after the box to trap consumers? Thank you. After the box, that's the financial insurance department. That's pretty much it.

I think that one of the reasons we have Rick here is because of the hazards of maintenance and repair. And so after you buy the car and finance the car, then you have to maintain it. And we do talk on this show a lot about being sure that you only pay for factory recommended maintenance that you do not go with the dealer recommended maintenance. So that's a hazard you have to watch out for. With the repairs, you have to be very careful because you can be given a high price, just like on a car shop

and compare prices on expensive repairs. And I think we have a very special caller right now. Is that the same, Nancy? It is indeed. We have her back. Hello, Nancy. Good morning. I have a question from Brie, who's a longtime listener of the show, and she read an article this past week.

I was going to go ahead and text it, but it's a little too complicated. She more or less wants the stamp of approval from all of you, especially you, Earl. And the article was from the USA Today, and it's in regards to shopping website. details depreciation percentages and it talks about the five best used auto deals broken down and this is from

I see cars and what they did was take a national average price and the decrease from new to a year old and it's all types of vehicles and the survey showed a decrease of 25.2%

and the cost of that vehicle. Do you know anything about the article? Can you shed some light on it? Yeah, I haven't read the article. Depreciation is an important fact to

take into consideration when you're buying a used car. And I go back to your favorite and my favorite source consumer reports. Their used car buying guide is the best thing that you can come up with when you buy a used

car, takes into account the depreciation and all the other variables. You can have a car that had relatively low depreciation, but they might also have other problems that would be something you should take into consideration. If you see the top 10 used cars recommended by consumer reports, and they break it down by price class, above 10,000, below 10,000, 10 to 20, whatever, and you can really get granular with a specific use car you want and search for one of those. But depreciation is very important. I'll give you a good example. The Jeep has very low depreciation, and you might say, well, that's a great buy.

It's a low depreciation because people love jeeps, and they're not enough jeeps to go around, and they tend to depreciate very little. but they're also unsafe, high maintenance, high insurance, and a lot of other negatives. So concern reports is the best source of picking out your used car. Yes, well, to your comment about the Jeep Wrangler, it does show that SUV having the smallest drop percentage-wise. But as I said earlier, Brie is really anxious to purchase a vehicle.

And I think what caught her eye, you know, was the fact, that there's some, you know, really good prices out there right now, but is the article valid? She talked about the biggest drop, and that would be the BMWXS and the Land Rover to mention a few. So I think that your suggestion about the Consumer Report, which I agree with, is a great guide, and I think that she should just forget the article from USA Today,

and that article was from Mark Feeleon. And I think that the consumer report would be a much better idea. I thank you for your thoughts. Okay, Nancy. Thanks for the coach. Do you have a comment. Yeah, Nancy had mentioned in the article they mentioned this website called Icars.com. And I'm familiar with that a little bit.

It's just a car referral service, kind of like auto trader or car gurus. But there is always caution that we need to advise when you're looking at that. Car gurus, for example, is a competitor to auto trader. It's smaller. and they rate the price that is given to them by the dealers, and they'll say it's a great price, good price, fair price. They do not take into a factor hidden fees. And so I see Cars does the same thing,

and they will rate the cars a great deal, good deal, et cetera. But you have to be an astute consumer and realize that most dealers are still going to add on hidden fees on top of that. So you need to ignore the rating on the price, so their opinion on it. pretty important to take into consideration and like I said she's in a hurry to buy a vehicle and this article just popped up at her and you know I think you guys really answered the question and the concerns that she asked thanks so much thanks to go on Nancy I'll see you in about

an hour remember you can call you can call 877 960 or you can text us at 772 49760 and please don't forget www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Stay tuned for that mystery shopping report. It's going to be a doozy. Thank you, Nancy. Okay, we have a call, another caller. We've got David, originally from New Jersey, but now in Florida.

Wow. Hi, David. Hi, how are you? Doing great. How are you doing? Very well, actually. I'm still from New Jersey, just vacationing in Florida. Well, good.

My question was regarding residual. The residual is very important with regard to the final leasing price of a vehicle, I believe. Yes. And when it comes to the end of the lease, now I remember in the past that I was able to negotiate if I wanted to purchase the vehicle at the end of the lease. Is that still a possibility today? No, not anymore, David. That was a long time ago. And we, right now, you have a specific option to purchase in the contract.

They're closed-end leases now. Yeah, closed-in. Well, yeah, but even before in the closed-in leases, there was a little bit haphazard about the, way cars were bought and sold. And there were some lawsuits because the leasing companies were accused of not honoring the option to purchase. It's a long story. But it's really nailed down pretty hard now. And you have that one price in the contract. That's what you can buy it for. But they also charge you a fee to exercise the option to purchase. So it's not nearly as good as it once

was. Okay, and the residual though when you're negotiating a lease, they have some leeway with what the residual will be and the higher the higher the residual, the lower the lease price, am I correct than that? Yeah, they're using the residual now as a price discounter. If they're trying to push a particular model like if they're selling a new car that's slowed down a little bit, instead of a rebate or a discount advertised, they bump the residual.

It'll enhance the residual and lower the rate. Yeah. So it's a lot of wheeling and dealing and leasing now, both by the manufacturer and the dealer, which makes it something that I always admonished people that want to lease. Be very careful. You've got to really do your homework. You've got to be sharp. You've got to be tough.

if you go into negotiate a good lease price it's twice as hard as to negotiate a purchase price but it can still be done and there are times because so much emphasis is being put on leasing now by manufacturers and dealers why because they make more money both of them that your choices out there are greater with leasing so you might be able to get a better deal if you lease a car

if you're really tough but it's also a lot harder to do Well, I agree with you wholeheartedly that you really have to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges and visit several dealers. And I'll tell you, I consider myself a pretty good negotiator, but even after I negotiate the best price at one of the dealers and I sign all the contracts and I walk out the door to my car, I say, okay, now how did they? How did they get over on me? Well, you know, you're better overly skeptical. And every now and then, if you look at centricing, if you look at the sales of all the vehicles in a dealership for a month,

you could look at the same model, for that matter. The profit that dealer make will vary by thousands of dollars. In other words, Tom Jones came in, and he bought this Honda Civic, and they made $1,000. Mary Smith came in, and they sold the exact same car the next day, and they made $2,000. And a little old lady, and pardon the expression, I don't mean to be deprecating in any way,

but disrespectful or whatever the word is. They made $10,000 on the little old lady. It's a terrible system because the salespeople are commissioned, and they're armed and trained to make as much money on every person that comes in the door. And the least sophisticated, the less educated, the English language impaired, the very young, the very old,

these are what I call victims, they come in, and they're the ones that'll pay the dealer a $10,000 profit on the same deal on the same deal that David, who is a sophisticated bar, you'll go in and he'll make $100 on you. He'll make $10,000 on the grandmother and he'll make $100 on David.

That is the way cars are sold. okay well thank you very much for your answers thank you david appreciate the call and i believe we have a youtube well it's kind of a continuation banhammer 1488 uh he had to take a phone calls so he kind of came back with some more information here he says two thousand miles on a new silverado and he had to get the salesman to acknowledge that it actually wasn't brand new and he says he's going to be low-balling them on Monday to see what's what. And he says, also, I got that, well, that's why it's so low over the phone, smoke and mirrors. Please come into the dealer, and we may be capable of dealing face-to-face, but not an email.

Yeah, that's typical. You want to get them on the door. They don't, oftentimes salespeople are ordered, prohibited, and they can be fired for giving a legitimate price over the phone. Always you'll want to get them in the door. And that way you can play your smoke and mirrors game and bump the price of thousands of dollars. On cars that have 2,000 miles, that is not a lot of miles on a new car. And it will be added to the manufacturer's warranty, and you should be sure it is. If it's a demonstrator or even a service loaner, and oftentimes a new car in stock will have miles on.

30 or 40% of the vehicles that are sold today were not in that dealership. You bought it from stock inventory. He got it from somebody else. Our dealership is in North Lawn Beach, Florida. We will get dealers, cars from Jacksonville, and from Orlando, and from Tampa. So we'll have two, 300 miles on a car, and it's fairly common. It is a new car that is taken into consideration when you buy it.

So if it's a 36,000 mile warranty and it had 300 miles on when you bought it, you get 36,300 miles. Be sure they do that, but it is a fact that, I don't ever remember selling a car with zero on the odometer. It's never happened. Never happened. They got to drive it off the truck. Exactly. So if Banhammer goes in and he's fighting for this Chevy Silverado, which you always say trucks have a bigger discount available that a consumer can fight for. with 2,000 miles on it, just a ballpark idea.

What can he really expect to maybe get out of them? He isn't probably going to get anything out of them because they had 2,000 miles on it. He can use that as a focus. But as far as the dealer's concerned, especially if this is a low-supply high-demand truck and they only have two or three in stock, he's going to sell that one with 2,000 miles on it

for as much or more than he'd sell one with no miles. But it's probably more motivated to sell. it because if there's other cars like it and other Silverado and a facing dealer, you know, so they definitely want to, they don't want that high mileage car to set in a lot. So if you tell them that you have, you're working a deal on a car

with no miles or less miles, a hundred miles on it. If you're hung up on miles, which I don't think you should be that much, as long as the car is pristine and there's no road damage or anything like that to it, if it's a real nice car and it's got 2,000 miles,

you're going to get 36,000 $38,000 miles warranty. But the psychology of it. You've got two identical cars side by side. One's got 2,000 miles. One has seven miles on it. I think the guy with a higher mileage car is going to have to discount that car a little bit more.

Use that against the salesman and negotiate. Sounds like some good weapons. And we have Howard in Jupiter. Howard. Hello, Howard. Hello, Howard. Can you hear us? Yeah, I hear you loud and clear. and I hope Nancy's doing better.

She's doing better. She'll be in next week, I'm pretty sure. That's great. I'm glad to hear that. Okay, here's my question to you. It's concerning Toyotas, not your dealership of Toyotas in general. I notice I have a 2017 Camry,

and then there was a new vehicle that came out, 2018, 2018, is practically the same. 2020 is practically the same. When will a real change be? made to the Camry. I am told that the 20, you know, about, top the bottom. I'm told 2021 is a body style change.

Usually they used to do every five years for the car total overhauls. And then they kind of accelerated that process. Remember, we had the 2014 Camry, which is new body style. Then the 2014 and a half, because nobody liked the 2014. Then the 2016, I think they changed it.

and so they kind of sped it up to keep up with the times you know styles are changing and so they got to stay fresh and new but I think it's 2021 is what we're going to see the next redesign on the camera you have any idea what new features there will be in the 2021 it's going to be a flying car I'm kidding I hope it we know that maybe amphibious

no I don't know here's here's my my prediction is that we're going to see more technological features some nifty stuff we haven't heard about yet. Probably better fuel economy and just a new styling is probably what we're going to see. Maybe a little more power, smaller engine. They just kind of get more efficient. Yeah, there will be improvements.

I mean, it'll probably look a little bit different. And they might do more hybrids. You know, they're trying to, Rick's got something. How about the wireless car play for Google and Apple? Yeah, I really hope they better do that because there's one Toyota model that has the wireless car play and not to go off on a total tension, but Apple CarPlay is the coolest thing. I think it's come down the pike for vehicles

because after the history of like how terrible the infotainment systems are, Apple CarPlay is awesome. You've still got to plug it in with a cord to your phone, but there are more cars out there that, well, in the future it'll be more available where you don't even have to plug it in. It just hooks with your phone, and it's pretty neat. It'll be exciting, I promise you, Howard.

Yeah, what is the story with the Super? I have a nephew that wanted to buy a Super. I guess I talked them out of it. Well, you know, it's interesting. Consumer Reports actually recommends it as a sports car. Yeah, they gave it a very high rating, and it's just supply and demand. You know, cars are not exciting anymore.

SUVs and trucks are exciting, and crossovers are exciting. These sports cars are just not. exciting. And you have a limited number of people. They were the first time, you know, people that have to have the first vehicle on the street. And that population is diminishing. So when the super came out, the price peaked and then it crashed. I mean, if you bought a car on speculation, the super, you really cost you a lot of money. You're going to buy a super dirt cheap now, but it's a great little car. I bought one. Yeah, I don't want to drive a super because I don't, it's hard for me to get in and out of.

That's my workout routine. I can get in it, but I can't get out again. Will you go to the gym, and that's how you work out? I work out by getting in and out of my super. Yeah, well, it's great work, but I'm too old. It's fun to drive them. I wanted to charge my nephew, I think $1,000 over the MSRP. I told them, forget about it.

This is a year ago. You can buy it for cost now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were doing that. You can buy below cost now. Yeah, I'm sure you're a dealership. than do that, but they were doing in Brooklyn, really hitting people.

Of course, it's the status thing in Brooklyn, you know, you would slick back here and all that stuff. We knew a dealer up in Virginia, Howard, who the general manager priced it like double MSRP, like $120,000, and then the news article came out, made national news, and the guy that owned the dealership flipped out and almost fired the general manager for embarrassing him. But I'm sure if the news story hadn't come out, he probably would have. would have patted him on the back if he sold it.

Well, Howard, you probably heard about, you probably know John Stalupi, no of him, and you probably heard that John Stalupy paid over a million dollars. $2.1 million. Well, how much? $2.1 million. That was a charity thing, though. Yeah, for the first super that came off the assembly line. Now, I guarantee you he's not too excited about that right now.

No, he got a tax right off. It was a charitable contribution. Is it worth more money now since this is the first one? I doubt it. No. Well, maybe. I mean, how about it? the first Edsel, maybe that'd be worth

a lot of money. I don't know. Give it a hundred years and then it might be worth it. There's only one car worse than the Edsel. Yeah. The Ugo. Remember the Ugo? I do. Well, I turned it down. Yeah, you almost had a franchise.

They asked me to take the Ugo franchise, and the Ugo guy came in, and in order to get the franchise, I had to buy in advance one year's worth of Ugo's. You wanted to see how your checkered franchise was going to cloud. And I laughed him out of my office

and he went over to the Dodge dealer on Okeechobee Boulevard and he did it and he became a Ugo dealer. So it's, you know, you never know. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Howard. Have a great one. 877-960-99-60

877-960 or text 772-497-6530 772 497-6-5-30 we better catch up on these texts more anonymous feedback this is a good one

it could be dangerous in your opinion Earl what is the absolute worst in caps the worst car dealer in South Florida and why gosh that's a tough one you know

Napleton comes to mind Greco let's bring a model Greco Roger Dean's given a run for the money yeah I hate to pick on Roger Rogers's past a way years ago and his daughter is on the dealership there.

It's hard to say. Let's not say worse. I think that's too judgmental. Let's say practices that we've uncovered that we find to be very consumer-friendly, run rampant at the Napleton and Greco dealerships. Yeah, Fichillo over in Tampa. And there's always, you know, just when you think you've found, listen to the mystery shockering report that's coming up very shortly and tell me if they

should be a candidate because we've done them twice in a row and we haven't seen much improvement. Okay. Here's another one. A topical question. We'll hand sanitizer ruin the leather on my steering wheel. Let me answer this one. Okay. Probably not. Just don't let your hands dry thoroughly before you put it on there. It does have alcohol in it and alcohol will dry out. Yeah, we all got it. We each have our own little bottle. Here, look at it. That was for the microphone. Disinfecting waves. No, it's got alcohol in it. It will dry out leather and things like that. So just make sure if you put it on your hand, just let your hands dry before you grab your steering work.

Okay. That's my expert opinion. We'll skip that one. What was it insulting? We've got to do the nasty ones. Just bleep out the... Well, it's not... All right.

Amazingly runaway Toyota's only seem to be owned by old people. Well, we got to tell it like it is. And we love selling Toyota's old people. because old people have money, and they're nice. And they're smart. They got experience. Yeah. So we'll have an old folks sale or something. Okay.

I think they're probably referring to when Buddy had called and was talking about his car and the brakes. And I don't think it's a fair comment to make. I think what happened to Buddy was scary, and it deserves to be looked into. Okay, here's another one. I think Nancy might have set this one in. You need a new theme song. Actually, no, that's not Nancy because I think she picked that theme song. She said, you need a new theme song, or whoever wrote this.

You need a new theme song. If you want to attract female listeners, you're playing an aggressive, masculine Western theme song. How about something empowering by a female artist like You've got to be by Desiree? Well, we'll talk to Nancy about that. She's in charge of the... The other issue is the trademark and copyright thing. I think we get dinged on Facebook whenever we play the... good and back in the ugly.

But, you know, who knows? Okay. Text. We have texts coming in, too. Oh, this is kind of cool. So last week we had somebody on anonymous feedback, say they got this incredible deal up in New Hampshire on a new corolla, and I indicated I was skeptical about the deal. I remember, yeah.

So they said their total effort was 21-99-99. Anyway, I had some back-and-forth, friendly back-and-forth with the texter. in the last week, and he sent me his buyer's order. And there was a mistake. He accidentally said it was 21-99-out-the-door. It was actually $23.9. So it was a couple of $1,000 higher. And in New Hampshire, they're taxed, sales tax exempt.

They also don't have the southeast Toyota administrative fee, which all new tootas in our area in the southeast of the $1,000. $1,100, yeah. And then the regional rebate in our area is, 500, there's is 1,500. So when we did all the math together, he got a fantastic deal. And I got to say, it's not practical, but if you want to buy a new Toyota, go move to New Hampshire. Because I have not seen a deal like that. I'm looking at bottom line, this guy is 1,000 less than you can get it down here in South Florida. Let's do that. Let's do some mystery shopping of Connecticut

dealerships and see what the prices are compared to the South Florida market. Okay. Well, I mean, you don't even have to do the mystery. shop, just take off the sales tax. That's going to save you over a thousand on every car. Yeah. But you've got to be a resident to get the sales taked. I was being facetious. Don't really move there. It's not, you'll spend more money moving there. All right, Ann Marie texted us and says, Good morning. There's an old rumor that cops tend to pull over flashy cars even if they aren't speeding, you know, the type, the cars that look like they would break the land speed record just standing still. Kind of like my car. Do you know if that's true? I think it's true because it's human nature.

I know how I feel when I'm on the road, and I got this thing against BMW drivers, and they all seem to drive recklessly and fast. And every time I see a BMW, my blood pressure goes up a little bit. It's purely irrational, and it's probably stupid. But I think cops are human beings, and we all react to the cars that people drive. I don't like people that drive Bentley convertibles. I don't know why. Yeah.

And if you're driving one, we don't want you to listen to the show either. That's right. You're not welcome here. That's right. I was planning on getting one of those. But yeah. There's only charity.

Am I wrong about this? Let's be honest about that. When you're on the road, you look at people, people are identified not only as themselves but what they drive. Yeah. And I have a feeling of certain cars. I feel warm and fuzzy about. Other cars, I get angry.

What do you feel when you see somebody driving a Mini Cooper? I feel like they're dumb. Oh, my God. You know your controller drives one of those. I just think... Sean, if you're listening, please don't be offended.

This is called infotainment. That's what we're doing here. All right, we have another text saying, Earl, your dealership remain open during the outbreak. We've already answered that question. The answer is yes, and we're keeping it clean. Good morning, Earl and Company. This is Ben in Pennsylvania looking to clarify

the tire pressure monitoring system. Can I say something? Can I editorialize on that last question? Read it again. Earl, will your dealership remain open during the outbreak? Well, of course, you answered it. We are going to remain open,

and we're doing it because we're taking extraordinary cleansing steps. But the biggest thing that we're doing, and if we have any federal or state or any officials, we need to have help for small businesses to subsidize. They passed it last night. The House passed it's gone to the Senate. But I don't

believe it is for I don't believe it's for an employee who feels uncomfortable about their symptoms. No, it's if you have it. If you have it. I don't think that's a way to do it. If you have it, if you have

the coronavirus, the federal government is saying is taking steps to come in and pay that person to stay home. Well, actually, reimbursing employers. Reimburseing employers. What you should do is, and this is the federal government and the state and anybody, you should be able to let an employee if they have the symptoms, even though they don't know they have it, to tell them to stay home at full pay, because that will break the cycle of the infection. If everybody that sneezed and coughed and had a temperature

did not come to work and were paid 100% or what they'd normally make, make, they'd have no incentive to violate that, they would go home, and there would be no exposure. Rick? I got just two thoughts on it. The first one is that might also be worth expending to include, say, if my wife tested positive for coronavirus, obviously the contagious factor is extremely tight. We live in a small house, so there'd be a very good chance that I would get it. But you would want to go to work because you wouldn't want to be around your wife.

Well, that too. Oh, boy, that truth comes out. Hey, there is something, by the way, and I haven't really read the details, but in that legislation that's likely going to get signed in the law. It did have actually, like a Family Medical Leave Act, FMLA, will allow you to keep your job if you have to leave or take care of the amount. Okay, let's move along. We're going to real quickly.

I know. The only thing that I mentioned is going to, it's going to be paid family medical leave is what I'm trying to tell you, Rick. Testing needs to be made available immediately. Yeah, okay. Good morning, Erland Company. Good to a non-corrhotic question. This is Ben in Pennsylvania looking to clarify the tire pressure monitoring system instructions. First, and always make sure you read your owner's manual because not all cars use TPMS the same way.

To prove my point, I undertook a quick research project this week and went through a few online 2020 owners' manuals. Honda Accord and Civic still use indirect TPMS, and their manuals give specific instructions on how much the vehicle must be driven after the TeeC. TPMS set button is pressed. In order to learn the setting, Ford, Mazda, Ram, Kia, Dodge, and Subaru use a direct TPMS. Don't have a set button. Rick is correct. Toyota uses direct TPMS and does have a button to set the tire pressure level. I only check popular models for these makes, so please read the manual in case your model is done.

Thank you for that input, and let's move to the next question. Okay, that was my plan all along. I think Buddy asked all the questions a new car buyer could possibly ever need answered. and by the way, Betty was a caller that we had earlier in the show. By the way, I called last week with my questions regarding new seat covers for my 27 Camry. Got a call back from Martin and Parts Department. Same day, he explained to me my options and expected cost involved. We got them ordered, and here I am one week later, enjoying my new seat covers.

What a great job of customer service and satisfaction, Mark and Palm Beach Gardens. Thank you. Good morning, Earl. Steve from New Jersey. I'm waiting for the delivery of my factory order car. Upon delivery, if the dealer finds a scratch on the car and repairs prior to me taking receipt, are they obligated to inform me of this repair? Also, if the car was damaged in this manner, should the sales price be discounted?

Lastly, can I reject delivery if the car was repainted? Great question. States have different laws. State of Florida has a law that if you have damage on a car greater than 1% of the ballot, MRP, then you have to disclose it. I would say that if the car had a scratch on it and you ordered it and it came in and had a scratch, you would have a right to decline it. And I think that if they paint it, there is a risk, depending on the scratch, that it could

devalue the car. Anytime a car gets painted for any reason, it has less value than a car that's never been painted. That's a sad fact. You can have a car that has the best paint job that you've ever seen, and it looks like it's brand new or maybe better than brand new, but when you put a paint meter on it, which is a device that measures the thickness of the paint,

the person who appraises that car is going to say it's been repainted, even though it might have been a spot, and he will devalue the car. So if I were buying a new car that I ordered and there was a scratch on it, I'd say, I don't want that car. I want one without a scratch on it, even if you painted it. But the dealer would not be required to tell you that it had been repainted, and that's a sad fact. Yeah, it's a shame that the average consumer doesn't have access to the paint meter that we use when we appraised cars. Good point.

Because that would give it away. Actually, you know what? It could save you a ton. I mean, I think they're about 100 bucks or so to get a paint meter. You'll probably get it online. What's the official name? Are they call them paint meters? I don't know.

Yeah. Well, we could Google that. Yeah. Okay. Next. Rick, you got anything? The Karsis coating thickness gauge paint meter, basically, available on Amazon, $120. The red one is $130, and they have some cheapy models here for like $17.

But I think I would probably go with one that's going to be a little better quality. But yeah, I'm seeing one right on here right now at five stars, five reviews only, but it's five stars. But $120 for a painting. Think about it. $120. bucks could save you thousands in a loss that you'd get on an appraisal when you trade that car in. And it would be a great negotiating tool. You come in, you're looking at the newer used car, you'll whip out your paint meter, and the salesman's jaw drops.

Throw a fit on the show floor. You weren't going to tell me this? That, oh, that would scare you. You go around the car and say, okay, based on my findings, I'm going to offer you a thousand dollars less than you're quoting me. That would be really funny. Do you imagine the look on a used car manager's face. If you saw customers wandering around the used car a lot with a paint meter. I got a great idea. Agent Thunder, we'll get them a paint meter. We got them. This will be hysterical. I got one in my pocket right now. Yeah. Mystery shop. We're going to mystery shop somebody with a paint meter. That's great. Hey, earlier Warren called in and was asking about what the difference between an Avalon and

Alexis. And I just had the thought popped into my head that, well, when you get right down to it, A Corvette, which is like the Golden Star American sports car, is nothing but a Chevrolet. If you're really just calling them names and you're just looking at the name. But it is a Chevrolet. A Corvette is a Chevrolet. I know it is a Chevrolet. But it's a, you know. So Chevrolet Corvette?

But that's when you're looking at names and you're saying, well, I have to have a certain car because of a name. Well, okay. but you know what's in a name a rose is a rose you know in the biz sometimes back on the paint meter we do call it a mill gauge when we want to be fancy okay we can take a couple more

text here we'll get caught up because we're almost done good morning Earl I just had struts put on my 2007 Honda Accord when is it necessary that I have shocked absorbers replaced I don't know Rick very simple test

I go to the front of your car in the back of the car, basically just put your knee on the bumper or your hands, push the car up and down and get it towards bouncing up and down a little bit, and then step back. If your car continues to bounce more than once or twice up and down, it's time for new struts or shocks. I like that. I've seen people do that before I never, yeah. It's called a jounce test or a bounce test, and it's basically the springs actually control the height of the car and and let the car bounce up and down, and the shock absorbers simply slows and controls that bounce.

What make car was this? It was an accord. Sorry. What your make was this? I didn't say. Or is it 07 maybe? 2007, according to you. So what is the life of a set of shocks on what make was it?

Honda Accord. Honda Corp. It's going to depend on the car and your driving habits and where you go with it. I've seen my 97 Tacoma that I have. had, I put 270,000 miles on it and never needed shocks or struts. That's what I thought they lasted a long, long time. A lot of cars, they'll last a life of the car. I mean, so.

I have a correction to make, by the way. It's not called a mill gauge. That was misinformation passed along by my brother. It is not called a mill gauge. Don't try to buy one. All right. Moving along. Bob text us in response to the somewhat abrasive comment that we got on anonymous feedback about the old people.

It says just to know older folks, no value, and that is absolutely true. Well, I tell you what, I'm not saying this because I'm an old guy, but we find that the older people are far more sophisticated buyers and informed buyers. And we have a high population of older people in Palm Beach County, and there are, you know, they're the preferred buyers, as far as I'm concerned. It's the school of hard knocks. Yeah. You learn through your experience.

experience. Yeah. That's right. We are all caught up with our text and anonymous feedback. Well, fantastic. And now we have a very interesting mystery shopping report. And again, I say, I think I didn't cover this, as I usually do at the beginning of the show. This is something that no other radio show, TV show, anybody does. We actually go undercover, and we have a great, great mystery shopping person and we use other people too agent thunder is our primary mystery shopper but we use female shoppers and uh we use different people we we actually have uh teams go in husband and wife even children come in to mystery shop so when we go into a southward of cardio ship they can't tell by the looks of the folks coming in there who they are and they don't know

that they're not going to buy a car in reality. Disguises. We use disguises sometimes. Exactly. Exactly. So we mystery shopped Southern 441 Nissan. For you folks who have been around for Palm Beach County for a while, they used to be called Royal Palm, Nissan, and they were bought out by a man named Terry Taylor a few years ago, a couple years ago maybe.

One month ago, we investigated Southern 441 Nissan for an ad they ran promising a very low lease payment for a new 2020 Nissan Rogue, just $128 a month. We analyzed the ad and had a pretty good idea what the catch would be before we ever visited Southern 441 Nissan. There are specific things that we look for in lease ads. The first being the total amount of money required is signing. And this is always hard to find and figure out, and it's always in the fine print.

This amount should include the down payment and all taxes and fees. We also look at the contract term, 36 months, 48 months, 24 months, and the miles allowed vary from... I saw one ad a long time ago that actually only allowed 5,000 miles a year. And it was 50 cents for an overage.

I haven't seen that sense, but 7,500 is not uncommon. 10,000 is common, and 7,500 is... I don't think they... Do they do 10,000? I've seen 10,000. 10,000, yeah.

So you've got to know what your mileage allowance is, and you can't see it because it's in the fine print. And the lower the mileage allowance, the likelihood, the more it's going to cost you. I'll hit you with 15, 20, 25 cents a mile, and as a high as 50. Anything you save in the payment, you'll give it up. In that case, we suspected the catch was a large amount of money due its signing, and it always is. even the manufacturer's ads

I might say which you would think that General Motors and Honda and Toyota when they advertise on television and they say $199 a month coming from Honda or Toyota and in the fine print

on the TV that you cannot read $2,000 $1,000 $5,000 you don't know what it's going to be I saw a Brayman ad one time that had $20,000 down payment in the fine print. 20,000.

So even on the manufacturer ads, when they have the out-of-pocket, the dealers will add more to that. I mean, they'll be, because the fees aren't included. Oh, sure, yeah, exactly, yeah. Taxable fees, non-taxable fees. When Agent Thunder went in, he confirmed this was indeed the catch. As a matter of fact, his salesman Lloyd addressed, this is the previous shop I'm talking about.

Salesman Lloyd addressed this right up front. As soon as Agent Thunder mentioned, from the ad, Lloyd immediately informed him that the payment would require some money down plus fees. Yeah. Yeah. So some. Some. They're trained because they know that the advertisement is bait and switch, and they start to diffuse the explosion right away when you come in by, oh, I told you there would be some money down.

Yeah, but they downplay it all. To get that payment, yeah. Things unraveled from there. the ad car wasn't even there in the previous shop. Lloyd and his manager, Sal, tried to switch vehicles and advised the actual payment would vary from the offer in the ad about $15 a month. It's not going to vary down. It's going to vary up.

About $15. And that's a lot of money on a lease, by the way. Yeah. And that's why leases are popular. What's 15 times 36? We're all payment buyers. Everybody's a payment buyer. We make our monthly mortgage payments, our light bill, our water bill,

everything's monthly payments, our car payment. We don't think in terms of price or true cost. We think, now, obviously, $220 a month doesn't sound like a lot of money. For 12 months, it's not a lot of money, but for 60 months or 72 months, it's a lot of money. And you don't ever see the term. It's all smoke and mirrors. Finally, Southern 441 Nissan, the previous shop, mystery shopping report, would not provide anything in writing.

Agent Thunder was told that an IT issue, Internet technology issue, was preventing them from being able to print any sales documents. They promised to email me the numbers, but the numbers never came. Nope. Never came.

We vowed to return in honoring our promise, targeted Southern 441 Nissan again this week. They're on Southern Boulevard, right? Correct. West out near 441. Way out in the boonies. From our perspective. Exactly.

From their perspective, we're in the bunnies. Exactly. Once again, the vehicle advertised was a 2000 new, 2020 Nissan Rogue, but now the payment was just $94 a month. Keeps getting better. So it was $1.28, they dropped it. Yeah. They lied about the $1.28.

Now they're lying even more about the $94 a month. You know, when you go so low, don't you think that people say this is silly? I mean, what if you said $1 a month? I think we did that one time. We ran and added the hometown news. New Toyota's $1, but we said we charged a $27,000 dealer fee. Just to make a point. It was a performance art.

It wasn't for real. Exactly. And just last time, the fine print indicated a sizable amount to pay a sign, just like the last time. Before reading the fine print, I have to point out that this was possibly the most difficult fine print to read. Tiny, blurry black print on a dark textured gray background

was partially obscured by the web ads, navigation slider, images, white dots. I'm going to hold it up. It won't mean much to see. And by way, that's on that page. It's blown up a little bit. When I was looking on the actual web page

I got it from, I mean, I'm not a young guy, but I had pretty good eyes. I couldn't read it. I can't read it, I can't. It read plus tax, title, license, and $899 dealer fee. They actually called it a dealer fee there. It wasn't, they didn't call it dealer fee on the worksheet. No, they called it a duck.

It's funny, they call their own fees, different names, depending on where you're looking. I think these are standard disclosures that they copy and paste. I guess. Then it also said the blurry, unreadable fine print. $3,88 do its signing 12,000 miles per year zero security deposit required

they all say zero because it sounds good zero security is required I think yeah I do think that's like there's a legal thing you have to say whether there is or not I haven't seen a lease had with a security deposit no no I mean I haven't seen a lease that requires

one in the past if you had like a credit issue they would let you put down security deposits to get approved but I think it's required to say that So it shows how on top of things our state government is. It's required to say zero to the security deposit when nobody is charging security deposit. That's obsolete. Passet.

With approved credit, must finance with Nissan Motor. See dealer for complete details. That's anything. Everything we said means nothing. See the dealer for the details are as the payment is really $300 a month. And the offer expires on April 2nd, 2020. So there was the big out-of-pocket which was not inclusive of the big dealer fee

and which didn't include other hidden fees. Since Agent Thunder had been there recently, we gave him two cover stories, very good. He could use either one, depending on the situation. You've got to be fast on your feet, right? And Agent Thunder is fast on his feet. By the way, he had a baby last night. He mean his wife had a baby.

Well, they had a baby. He didn't birth the baby personally, but... I'm glad. And I, a boy or a girl? It's a boy. Well, they knew that. All right, yeah. Okay, here's the first undercover scenario, depending on the circumstances.

If he sees Lloyd, that was the salesman that he saw the first time he missed his job. He's returned to try again to lease a new rogue, and is super excited to see an even lower payment advertised. And this is assuming, of course, that Lloyd wasn't watching the radio show. Well, we take chances here. There's a certain amount of risk that we did. Scenario 2, if he doesn't see anyone from the first Mr. Shop, give his real name and proceed his noon. His real name, we used the phony name the first time. So speaking in the first person as if I were Mr. Thunder, I arrived in Southern 441 Nissan in the early afternoon.

Place was dead. Nothing compared to the scene last month. I walked into the showroom and looked around. No Lloyd was in sight. No Sal, the manager. I was greeted by Richard, and I launched into the scenario two cover story. I told him how excited I was to see a new car payment under $100. Richard was enthusiastic to help me and suggested we get started.

We sat down to the desk. Richard asked to see my driver's license. He used it to enter my info into a computer. He asked me to ask me some more questions than for my phone number and email address. It just occurred to me about this driver's license thing. Is there anything in the privacy laws that prevent car dealers from taking all that information on a driver's license and using it in some way? I don't think so. There's not, you know, obviously there's no social security number, but as far as conducting a transaction, you definitely will need an address and a name.

Yeah. So I think it's okay. We talked about the ad. Richard, just like Lloyd, began by advising me that the payment required some money down. Real quick, they are obligate under law to protect that information, though. Yeah. They can't let that lay down on a desk. So if they make a copy of a driver's license, they can't leave it out.

It has to be under lock and key. And probably most card dealers don't adhere to that very well. Yeah, I believe it. And it was on the base model. He sure as we'd be able to find the one that I like for a great payment. I told Richard that I was fine with a base model and said something about new cars being very well equipped these days, and they are. I mean, base models used to be stick shift, no air conditioning. You're still going to get power locks when it goes, all that.

Yeah, you get base models not a bad deal today. Richard said he would do his best to get as close to the ad, but I should expect the payment to vary some. Of course, we know which way it will vary. Same word, too. Isn't amazing? You just, you come in on it. Can you imagine going to buy a refrigerator? And you go in and you say, I want that GE refrigerator that you advertise on television.

And the first thing the salesman says, well, we'll try to find you one close to that price. They just, you know, no other industry retail retailer would dare say that the advertised probably, naturally, we're, naturally, we're not going to be able to sell you the car of that price, but we'll try to come close. I was fascinated that two different mystery shops, one month apart, two different salespeople, they use the same word, the payment may vary. I'm just picturing the sales meeting. Now, repeat after me, payments may vary. Yeah. Payments may vary.

Yeah. I waited for Richard to get the car and for us to drive. He came back, reported that was up front waiting for us with the air conditioning cranking. The test drive was entertaining, informative. Richard gets credit for good salesmanship. He made me want to buy for. on him, although the $19773 addendum on the car kind of killed my buying mode. Did you see what was listed on that addendum? What that $2,000 is buying?

I didn't look at it in detail. Door edge and cup guard, window tint, leather guard, fiber guard, and paint guard. Lots of guard. And that whole package is probably worth about $150. The window tint might be if it's a good quality window tint. The rest of it's worth Zip. 973 for, let's be generous, $500. Yeah, being very generous. Back of the dealership, I was given the trial close. Richard won't know how I liked it.

If I'd like to take it home with me, I said, I think I might while pretending to suppress a smile. Richard asked me, how much I was willing to put down? He said, to get the ad payment, I would need something in the neighborhood of $7,000. Remember, we responded to an end. And that all you could see was a monthly payment. And $3800 in the pocket.

And here we are. He's doubling it. Yeah. I pretended to be shocked. I don't know why he pretended. He should have been shocked. But he knew what was going on. I know.

He knew the other. I know. I said I was hoping to keep it under $4,000. I mean, I knew I was going to get screwed, but I didn't know I was going to get screwed that bad. So Richard said he would print out some options for me. No IT issues today. computers were working on the shop. He printed a worksheet

for me to review. The right side broke down the purchase options, and the left side had a grid that showed lease payments and various down payments, almost like a four-square kind of a nonsense thing. The purchase options showed a huge $6,950

discount off the MSRP of 25, 530. But when the 19703 adendum amount, and that was for what Rick just itemized, window tin and fabric guard and leather coat and nonsense, maybe a $500 value. $19773 a denim was added. Then they added $345 and $50 in taxable fees,

another name for a dealer fee or a hidden fee, and $899 a dock fee, which is a dealer fee or a hidden fee. So the hidden fees are $12,300, and they, And the dealer-installed accessories, or the addendum, the overpriced, under-value addendum sticker, were added before something called, oh, but wait, there's more. A worry-free lease, worry-free lease in the amount of $1,699 was added.

I mean, this is unbelievable. I mean, they have it all. The hidden fees, a non-taxable fees, and the worry-free lease and the nonsense addendum label Royal Palm Nissan has it all. To quickly recap, Richard discounted MSRP by $6,950, but then added back 4,916, before sales tax and tag fees. The lease matrix on the left side of the worksheet wasn't any prettier. With a $3999 down payment, the monthly lease would be somewhere between $240,000. Right, come on.

What are we coming on? $194. I came in on $94. He came in $94 a month with $3888 out of payment. Now it's got the same amount, and now it's three times the amount. And then, if you want to get the payment down, $4,99. Can we call that $5,000 rounded off? It would be $215,000 to $225, and the $5,000, with $6,000 down.

It would still be double the other. The payment would be $186 to $196, and that's a range. They're not even giving you. Yeah, more than double. Yeah. More than double the ad payment. Yeah, double. Of course, as none came close to the $94 ad payment, the bait, the bait, $94 a month.

Even the option with $3999 down, close to the $388 required the fine print, the payment was $150 more than the ad payment. not even an attempt to be anywhere close. That sure did vary. Yeah. I pretended to, yeah, I'm a big very. I pretended to ignore the inclusion of the $1973 addendum, but I asked about the worry-free lease. Richard said it was a good idea to include it

as it would protect me from charges most lease customers incur. He also pointed out I would make, I haven't seen this before. You ready for this? For the worry-free lease, he was asking me to make buy monthly payments that would match my paycheck deposits. I said that wasn't necessary. Yeah, that's the smart payment plan. You can see it on the picture of the buyer's order. Yeah.

I mean, they're actually willing, they're going to go after your paycheck the minute it hits the bank and knock out the worry-free lease. I asked Richard if he could hold the car for him a couple hours. He said he would. I thanked him and said I was going to bring my wife back with me as soon as I, she got off work. So as we suspected, and just like our last visit, the ad was pure bait and switch, probably the greatest bait and switch we've missed to shopped in a long time. Agent Thunder got a taste of just about everything the worst of the car business has to offer. Deceptive advertising, salesperson misdirection, huge addendums, and extremely valueless

products for the addendum, huge hidden fees and unwanted insurance products being slipped in. I've got some pictures here of the ad, verifies exactly what I said

about the fact that you can't read anything. And you've got the addendum. I'm going to hold the addendum, which is just, as you look at it on the screen, just to the left of the Maroni label. And you can see how they tried to phony up the addendum to look like it was part of the Monroney. That's the reason we call these addendums phony and Monroney's. They counterfeit the

Monroney label, which is a federally mandated sticker. And the logo and everything, the font, the color is made to make you think that the, this is the, this is the phony monroney and that's the real Monroney. and they have them side by side. So you really think it's the MSRP, but it is not. Okay. I don't want to prejudice this by saying what I think of the shopping report. So let's get an idea of some of the votes that we have so far.

We have William on Facebook gives them an F. Then another William, a different William on text, gives them an F. We have a Lisa with an F, a Mary with an F, and a Bob with an F. I think that's a consensus. I'm failing them. bad job bad job yeah Rick I've got Jose Huerta's with a very big F Ed Overdyke with an F minus and for me F well I know Nancy is home with her foot up in the air and the boot on her foot did she vote she's putting the boot all I won't go

there I'm sure I know what she's going to say she's going to have and Linda on Facebook gives them a big fat huge F oh my goodness she says yeah have a YouTube vote. Actually, we have one other question. If we can squeeze it in, if you think, ever we finish here? Okay, let me give my vote as an F. And if you listen to the show regularly,

I always struggle with Fs because I hate to put somebody on the do not buy list. It's very nice guy. But with this kind of behavior, I would highly recommend you buy your Nissan other words anywhere besides Southern 441. That is a terrible report.

I don't know how many choices you have, but I would stay away from Southern 441. And if you're Southern 441 Nissan is listening, you're really going to get your act together and not advertise and bait and switch like that. We're going to shop you again, and we will embarrass you again unless you change. What you're doing is illegal, it's unfair, it's susceptible, and it's terrible.

And we've only got a couple of minutes left. Can we do the YouTube question? Real quick, is George Lindsay is asking, which car is the better buy based on safety and reliability? A 2019 accord or the Camry? I'd have to look at consumer reports. I honestly don't know.

They're probably close. I'd say close. I give Camry at the edge, though. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, well, they'll look at consumer reports, and they'll tell you very simply, which is the safest. And it could well be the Honda because they build a great car,

and Toyota also builds a great car. You know, sometimes you just have to go with a car you like as long as they're all recommended. Coke and Pepsi. And CHJ-229 says, Earl, do you ever mystery shop your own dealership to see if they're doing what you preach? Every week. Every week. We try to shop at least two or three times a week. And thank you all for joining us.

And by the way, we get some bad shops, too. And we counsel and coach the salespeople when that happens because even their good honest dealership can have a rotten apple on the barrel. That's right. Thank you very much for joining us at Earl Stewart on Cars. And we hope Nancy Stewart, we believe Nancy Stewart, will be back with us next week. So it's another good reason to tune in. All you ladies out there, and we'll see you next Saturday between 8 and 10. Bye-bye.

Stay safe. Let's go. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. No. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome to me. Beto. Beto. Oh, oh, Oh,